


How Great Thou Art

by cathedraltunes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Anachronistic, Castiel as God (Supernatural), Dean/Cas Tropefest 5k Mid-Winter Challenge (Supernatural), Family Secrets, M/M, Minor Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:36:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28808208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedraltunes/pseuds/cathedraltunes
Summary: Long before the king out of the south conquered the northlands, there were gods of snow and earth and ancient blood; and the grave kings in the north made offerings to them.Unfortunately for Dean Winchester, the Campbell clan promised the god they called Shield-Raised-Against-Storm a bride.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 93
Collections: Dean/Cas Tropefest 2021 Mid-Winter 5k





	How Great Thou Art

He punched through the ice. Dark water, hard and cold as stone, enveloped him. The air shocked out of his lungs at the impact. Dean thrashed. He thought he thrashed. The world tipped over. The heat in his blood pulsed, the heat in his body. 

He stroked out with a hand, thinking he would touch ice. If he could touch ice, he could punch through it so long as the spell still beat in him. Water parted between his fingers. He touched nothing.

The freeze of the lake rippled. His heart beat. His blood thinned. He tried again. Again. Pressure built behind his eyes. The heat leeched from him.

In the dark, a faint light showed. It was a pale light. It was a cold light.

  
  
  


They’d a permit from the king for their work and the lord of Blackbarrow’s Officer of the Hunt either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared that Dean had written over the year of expiration then stained the leather with water to blur the ink. He’d given over the lord’s token without much word. 

It was an unsurprising thing. The lords in the north had little esteem for the king. A number of the lords still worshipped the lesser gods of their ancestors. Some of their officers had turned the brothers out without token, leaving Dean and Samuel to pay for their own food and bed. 

Samuel could go on at length about the politics of the kingdom, the war over the north that he claimed was only briefly won, the skirmishes played out now to the south and the east. He had studied with a grand, politically connected witch of the Summer Coven at the capital, a needling red-haired woman who had snipped and looked narrowly at Dean when he’d come to collect Samuel.

As far as Dean was concerned if they got a token then that was well and good, and if they didn’t get a token then he’d camped out in the snow before. 

At the inn in Little Barrow they ate a good, warm dinner and retired to a small but well-sealed room on the third floor, short of the attic. The akvavit sitting in Dean’s belly left him in cheer.

“We’ll scout the lake tomorrow,” he said, stretching in the candlelit gloom. “Decide where to set the traps. We time this right, we ground the harpies before the storms hit.”

“You really want to be snowed in here?” Samuel was bent over on the floor, scribbling with a length of lead in his tattered journal. “I told you we should have headed south.”

Dean snorted and twisted at the waist, held it. “So you can send love letters to your witch?”

If Samuel flushed it didn’t show in the shadows. “Rowena is my dominie.”

“Dominie,” Dean mouthed. 

“I shared blood with her,” he snapped at Dean.

“You share blood with me.”

“Can you please be an adult about this? Dean, I’m serious.” Samuel set the pencil into the fold of his journal. “I told you I wanted to head south this winter. And you kept pushing to head west--”

“Because there’s still a lot of work we can do before the season’s over.”

“And now I’m stuck here another winter!”

“What,” said Dean, putting on the grin that had made Rowena throw a jar of bat dung at him. “You sick of your older brother already?”

“Three years, Dean,” Samuel said. His jaw had set. “That was what we agreed to. Well, when it’s spring, it’ll be four years. And I am finishing my training.”

The grin dropped. “We promised Dad we’d see this through.”

“You promised Dad!”

The candle flickered. One of the seams in the wall facing to the east let a draft in. The cool air made harsh goose pimples all along the back of Dean’s neck. Samuel glared at him. His brow, set as it was, made long shadows across his face, and for all that Samuel had inherited more of their mother’s looks than Dean had, in the little light of the room Samuel could nearly have passed for their father. 

Dean said, “Get to bed. We’ll be waking up early. We’ll do reconnaissance around town first.”

Samuel, still glowering, snapped the journal shut with a hand and turned to blow out the candle.

  
  
  


The iced lake at the southern end of the wood had a god that slept within it. That was what the folk of Little Barrow said. Samuel had talked about the history of the lord’s domain with several of the town folk and as he and Dean punched their way through the snow crust toward the lake, he regaled Dean with all the things Dean loudly did not give a shit about.

The lake was called Harbor-Set-Before-Storm. The god was called Shield-Raised-Against-Storm. Until the king’s grandfather had crushed the godly traditions of the north, once every ten years a youth of Little Barrow was chosen by the lord of Blackbarrow to serve as priest to the god in the hopes that one day the god would pick a consort from the barrow folk. 

They stalked through the woods as Samuel droned on and on. A cold, dry snow had started in the darkest hours before morning, and it fell silently even between the densely stood trees. The town of Little Barrow had vanished behind the trees with disconcerting swiftness. The lake lay ahead of them and it was still, ice covered with snow, an expanse of blackness hidden beneath the coming winter.

“Don’t you think that’s interesting, Dean?” asked Samuel cheerfully over the wind. “Most of the northern lords made blood sacrifices. But the grave kings tried to offer wives to their gods.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“Or husbands. Or concubines. You know, the first people of the north, something killed them--”

“Probably the sound of you talking. Or the harpies we’re hunting. Remember the harpies, Samuel?”

“Then the grave kings migrated here from the west and started offering youths to their gods.”

“Holy shit, you’re still talking,” said Dean.

“So when the southern people pushed north,” Samuel continued talking, “the ones we call the northern lords, I think they saw these rituals and interpreted them as actual mortal sacrifice--”

At that point Dean had stopped and turned on his heel and stormed toward Samuel who being several inches taller than Dean hadn’t bothered to look intimidated. He shoved one of the over-laden bags of traps and bait and assorted magical accoutrement into Samuel’s chest.

“Go north, dickhead,” Dean said. 

Samuel made his eyes soft and round. The snow that landed in them ruined the effect. 

“But Dean,” he said, “what if the harpies catch me?”

“Use your witch magic,” Dean suggested. “The stuff your dominatrix taught you.”

Samuel made a rude gesture, something they showed each other in the south that meant nothing to Dean. He turned. Snow gathered in inelegant clumps in his mess of hair. He’d forgotten a hat again. 

“Bitch!” Dean yelled after him. Samuel made another gesture. Dean laughed and dug into the bag he’d kept for the jar of heating paste. 

  
  
  


Someone else taught him about gods once. His mother, Dean thought. She was northern, a proper northern lady that Mary, a woman who could ride a horse and beat a man with a shield and call down a hawk. So John told them when they were boys, learning the wandering cycle of the hunt as the king demanded it: the wobbling loop from east to west and back again.

The Campbells were grave kings in the days when the barrows of the far north needed tending lest the old grey ones go wandering. Dean avoided Campbell land. Blackbarrow was the closest he’d ever dared. It was the lake that separated the barrows from the Campbell mounds, the lake and the old wood. 

“Don’t fill his head with nonsense,” John told Mary.

She laughed and said, “It’s only nonsense to you. Southron boy.” Mary had held Dean on her hips as she spun him about with her. 

He remembered her as a smattering of colors, as a flash of skirts, a shape on a horse, a pair of hands that stroked his cheeks. A voice that in his dreams whispered, 

_ The gods live in the trees and the soil and in the water.  _

_ We eat their flesh, we drink their blood, we sing their songs. _

_ O, god. O, god. I walk in the circle, it does not break. _

_ I tend to my god and I tend to my song,  _

he heard her voice as he slipped through the cold water and the light hummed about him, and Mary said to her son:

_ I carry my sword for my god who is my shield. _

  
  
  


The woods went silent. A figure walked out of the ice at the northern line of the walk. It gripped the offering by the shoulder and dragged it limp like meat behind it. 

The winged winds crowed and screamed. The thing from the lake with its crown of blue ice looked to the sky.

“Be quiet,” it said harshly; and the harpies were silent as well before this their god.

  
  
  
  


The sun had gone. Bleary and shivering and soaked through his furs and heavy clothes Dean stared through frozen lashes at stars brilliant in their multitudes. The constellations showed strange. He did not know them. 

A shadow moved across the stars. His breath spilled in a white mist. He shook.

The shadow stood there. Dean tried to move his lips. They stung. They cracked. A hot, salt sting of blood touched his tongue.

“Do you know what I am?” asked the shadow. Its voice was a deep and cracking thing, like ice splintering beneath the water. 

Dean flexed his fingers. His hip burned with pain. The shadow sighed impatiently and stooped to lay a broad, bare hand over Dean’s face. The cold faded. Warmth flooded him. He closed his hand around the knife at his hip. Drawing it swiftly, he stabbed. 

The god of the lake looked down at its side. The hilt stood out from its chest. Dean grinned through his bloodied teeth and jerked free the knife, silver-made and etched with wards.

There were snowflakes in the god’s dark hair, snowflakes strung like flowers between wicked fingers of ice. The god looked at him. Its eyes shone white-blue. 

Dean’s smile faded. He made to stab again. The god caught his wrist and bent his arm back. Dean swore. A creaking pain lanced his shoulder. 

“Do you know what I am?”

Dean ground his teeth. He said, “You’re a frigid fucker trying to break my arm.”

“Are you that fragile?” asked the god. It asked this without inflection. “I’m not trying to break your arm.”

“Yeah, well, arms aren’t supposed to go at that angle, so you’re breaking it.”

The god rumbled. He eased on Dean’s arm. In the moment of gentling, Dean shoved his knee up between the god’s legs, drove his elbow into the god’s chest, and planted the knife in its throat. Scrambling back, Dean struggled to his feet. 

The god watched. Dean’s back hit a tree. The god stood. It pulled the knife from its neck. It said, “You fear me.”

“Fuck you,” Dean snarled. “I’m not afraid of shit.”

The god tilted its head. The dark hair fell across its brow. Its eyes continued to shine, bright and unwavering as the horrible stars above them. There was a soft penis swinging between its legs and Dean looked away from it.

“Where am I?” Dean felt at his chest for the thinner knife he kept hilted alongside his ribs. “Where the hell is Samuel?”

“Do you not know me?” 

“How’m I supposed to know you?”

The god squinted at him. “I am Castiel, god of the frozen lake and the northern storm. I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from the ice and squalor.”

“Thanks,” said Dean. “Didn’t ask. Where’s my brother?”

He glanced across the lake and then, astonished, he stopped, his gloved hand half into his heavy coat, now strangely dry. The lake went on endlessly to the horizon no matter where he looked but for the dark woods at his back. When he looked quickly ahead again, the god had closed the distance between them.

Castiel’s breath crept coolly across Dean’s lips, his wind-burnt cheeks. Everything in Dean went entirely still, as a mouse beneath the shadow of a hawk. 

“Be not afraid,” said the god.

Dean swallowed. He said, “M’not afraid,” in a voice that rasped and stuck in his throat.

The god touched his cheek with the back of its hand. Its knuckles were cold, its hand like stone. The look it gave Dean was nearly marveling. Dean felt the heart beating in his breast. The god, it stroked his cheek very slowly like that. Stubby black lashes fell over its eyes. It looked at Dean’s mouth. His throat dried. Castiel stood very close to him.

“Samuel,” said Castiel abruptly. “He has your blood. He’s looking for you. The supplicants are hunting him.”

“What?” Dean straightened. He grabbed at the god, clutched it firmly by the shoulders. Castiel fluttered as though startled. It went tight in his grip. “What’s hunting Samuel? Show me where he is!”

The god studied him then said quickly, “Give me your word and I will deliver you to him.”

“What?”

“Give me your word as my offering,” said the god. “Now, Dean!”

“Yes,” said Dean, “sure, whatever, you have my word, just take me to my brother.”

The god looked intently at him, for a moment too long, a moment endless as the blood in Dean burned overhot. It said something guttural and then again demanded, “Give me your word.”

“You have my god damn word!” he shouted; and the god Castiel clasped his hand on Dean’s shoulder and kissed him brutally once, a hard shove of his mouth to Dean’s mouth, the bone of his jaw cracking against Dean’s chin; and Dean came to at the edge of the lake in the glooming sunset with snow down the furred hood of his coat. 

  
  
  


Samuel was six the year the Campbells nearly found them. John tore into the inn room with thunder flashing in his eyes and his hair matted to his head with blood. 

“Grab your things now,” he said. “We’re leaving in the half hour.”

Startled Dean said, “But we just got here,” then deadened his face when his father turned that scything look on him. “Yes, sir.”

“Did you fight the huldra?” Samuel leapt off the bed. “Did you kill it?” 

“Samuel, stop,” Dean whispered sharply. “Pack your pencils.”

“I want to know if he fought the huldra.”

“The huldra’s not our hunt anymore,” said John. “Dean, why’d you let him make a mess?”

Dean hunched his shoulders and shoved the rest of Samuel’s clothes into the pack.

“I’m writing spells,” Samuel chattered on. “To help fight the monsters. Why don’t you have to hunt the huldra? Did somebody else kill it?”

“Dean!”

“C’mon, Samuel,” he muttered, grabbing Samuel by the hand. 

“And be quiet, both of you.”

“We’re stalking the huldra,” Dean told Samuel, who had turned questioningly to him. Samuel lit up and let Dean pull the hood of his shirt over his head and his mess of blondish curls.

They hurried down the stairs and, following John, out directly to the stables through the side door of the inn. Their father’s black horse had been one of a handful in the stables that morning when John had let Dean saddle Imp. Now several large, brutish northern horses, the sorts of horses with shaggy pale hair, filled the stalls and blinked their dark eyes as the Winchesters moved past them.

Dean climbed neatly up Imp’s back and John passed Samuel to him. Settling Samuel before him, Dean looped his body around his brother as John, head down, led Imp out the stables. 

It was the flag flying above the inn that Dean recognized. He’d dared a look back over his shoulder and saw it hoisted there, indicating that a lord or his official had occupied the town. A white hawk with arched wings grasped a wyrm by the neck, on a field of pinpoint white stars. Campbell.

“They want something,” John told them that night at camp. “We won’t give it to them.” He didn’t specify the something. Dean, holding Samuel, knew it by name anyway.

Samuel drew odd shapes in the dirt with a stick and hummed, unknowing.

Dean was wrong about that as it turned out but he didn't know that _then._

  
  


“I had it under control,” Samuel argued. “The traps were set, Dean, I was just using myself as bait.”

They stumbled into Little Barrow well after dark, following the beacon fires down the wooded hill. Dean said, “Yeah, but I’m the guy they fucking fled from in terror.”

“Probably because you smell so bad,” said Samuel. “You smell like dead fish, Dean. Where were you?”

Dean grumbled and said something about exploring the western shore of the lake and finding a fisherman’s blind. 

Samuel stopped walking. “A fisherman’s blind?”

“You want to eat or not?”

“I don’t know, am I eating fish from a fisherman’s blind?” 

They ate a heavy stew of dried jerky made soft in pig fat, there in the relative comfort of the lone public house. Samuel kept giving Dean little looks. Dean kept giving Sam little sneers. 

Under his tight-woven shirt, under the tunic tied over that, a cold sort of burn throbbed in Dean’s shoulder. He’d ignored it most of the evening, in the mad rush through the woods, in the moments he’d seen the long feathered shadows moving after Samuel, in the slog through the piled snow back to town. Now it bit at the bone.

He had seen the harpies as they did not fly but walked through the trees, bare human feet grasping at the branches. Their wings made delicate silhouettes. The feathers of their throats were sleek and pale. They were snowbirds but for those feet, the lean-boned hands at the alula of each wing, the woman’s face set in the round owl-shape of the head.

Dean stared into his cup of akvavit. The pungent smell of it stuck in his nose. His head was as filled with dreams. The harpies lingered, half-fogged, and alien constellations stood sharply in his memory. 

A heavy wood door slammed. Dean watched the stars slithering through his cup as Samuel jumped and swore and said, “Dean,” and then stood. A violent clamor moved through the room. The matron said, “Ah, sir, your clothes!” and then a man standing behind Dean said in a deep and rumbling voice,

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean smashed his knee into the table. He rounded as well as he could on the bench. 

“Wait, do you know him?” asked Samuel.

Castiel stood there naked as fresh snow with his crown of ice glittering. With Dean seated, Castiel towered over him. Dean gaped.

“You have found your brother,” said Castiel. He nodded. His pale eyes flicked. “You are Samuel. The second born.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Samuel, “I mean, yes, that’s me, but uh, you--” He glanced at Dean. So too did Castiel. 

Dean said, “You followed me!”

“Who is this guy?” Samuel demanded. “Why are you naked?”

A hushed whisper made its way through the room. The matron hurried to them. She’d a thick, furred cloak of brown velvet in her hands. Her dark eyes were round, her skin pale. She said to Castiel, “God. My god. Please, accept,” and bent to her knees with the cloak held aloft, well over her bowed head.

“You’re real,” Dean blurted. 

Castiel accepted the cloak. He pulled it over his shoulders without delicacy. It fell to his knees. His cock was still out. Dean stared at it. It was even with his face. His shoulder throbbed. Why the fuck would a god of ice have a dick that big, he thought. His belly tightened.

“I am real,” said Castiel with some impatience. “You gave me your word, Dean. I delivered you to your brother. Now I have come to collect what is owed me.”

A tremendous sigh rushed through the room. The matron stared at Dean. She’d gone even paler. Several of the burlier men looked just as shocked at Dean. He hunched his shoulders at them and turned on Castiel, meaning to shout at him. He wasn’t sure yet what he meant to yell. Then he met those pale blue eyes again and the skin of him prickled all over as if with cold, or something else entirely.

“You’re a god,” Samuel gasped from very far away. “You’re a-- Dean, he’s a god!”

“Aren’t you short for a god?” said Dean. “You looked taller when I was freezing to death.”

“You should show me more respect,” Castiel said meanly to Dean. “As my wife--”

“As your what?” said Dean.

“As his what?” said Samuel.

The god tilted his head. “Is that not the word?”

“I’m nobody’s wife,” Dean hissed. He looked around the room for support. Nearly everyone else was genuflecting. “For fuck’s sake!”

“You did give me your word,” said Castiel. “I asked that you vow to be my blood. My flesh. My sword.”

“When the hell did you do that?” asked Dean.

Castiel repeated the guttural thing he’d said before. 

“You bastard,” Dean shouted, “you can’t trick someone into promising to-- I am not your wife!”

The god had started to look mulish. It was astonishingly undignified. Samuel made a noise as if he’d bit his tongue.

“But you were promised me,” said Castiel. “You’re the Campbell offered to me.”

Even Samuel’s sudden flurry of questions vanished out of Dean’s hearing. 

It was as though he stood on the edge of that lake again, that lake on the other side of the world where the stars looked on him as strangers did and the trees grew thick and looming dark. 

“I will join with you,” said the god, standing before him in a warm cloak that smelled of earth. “Blood of my blood. Where you call to me, I will go to you. Whatever need you have of me I will fulfill it for you. And you will be my sword to cut down those who have buried my kin.”

The fragrant stink of newly tilled earth made Dean sway, drunk. The god shone. He gleamed nakedly before Dean and in the frozen stillness of his features was something like hunger, an old hunger, a hunger that stretched on forever. 

Ice tinkled. The god’s crown rose like antlers from his hair. His lips were wind-chapped and peeling. The bones of his face were too wide, his eyes too pale, and when he looked at Dean he had to lift his chin to do so. 

Dean swallowed. His throat hurt with ice. What would it do to you, to be worshipped by a god?

“What’s in it for me?” he asked huskily. 

The god’s brow knit. “What?” he said.

“That’s a lot of fancy talk,” Dean said. “Go here. Go there. But I ain’t looking for a dog.”

“I am not a dog,” said the god, scowling. His bones and dry mouth made it look all wrong, like a pout.

“I’m not looking to be somebody’s dinner either,” Dean continued, “or somebody’s wife, or your sword, or whatever else you’re going to say. I mean, we just met. You should take me out to dinner first.”

“What does that mean?” 

Dean choked out a laugh. “You know, like courting.”

“But I’ve already chosen you.”

“Who said I chose you?”

The god squinted. That hungry look clung to him even now. Dean had the impulse strangely realized to shove a bowl of that jerky in pig fat broth into Castiel’s hands. 

The shape of the public house ate into the corners of his vision. The stars were fading, but Castiel remained. 

“Look,” said Dean. “Sit down. Eat something.”

“Then you will obey me,” said Castiel. 

“No,” said Dean. 

Castiel, pouting again, sat on the bench. The bottom of the cloak caught under his ass. It was a bony ass and Dean did not look even once at it. Nor did he look at Castiel’s cock.

Dean pushed his bowl over in front of Castiel. “But you did save my ass. And my brother’s ass. And it’s a long winter.” 

He pressed a spoon into Castiel’s hand. Castiel looked at it like Dean would look at a rash cream Samuel’s mistress gave him.

“What! Is happening!” said Samuel. 

“Your brother has been chosen by the god,” said the matron worshipfully. “In the spring they will wed before the sacred ash tree.”

“Hold your horses,” said Dean, “who the hell said I’d marry him?”

“I don’t like that tree,” said Castiel. “He’s very rude.”

Samuel grappled with his head in both hands. “I can’t even write to Rowena about this. Why didn’t we go south, Dean!”

“Do you need to send a message?” Castiel grudgingly swallowed the spoonful of meat Dean forced on him. Speaking through the bulk of it, Castiel said, “I may speak to the birds on your behalf. You can warn those you love that I and my brethren will be bringing a reckoning upon those who tried to kill us.”

“We’re going to talk about this,” Dean said to them both. “Later. After we get you,” he punched Castiel in the arm, “some god damn clothes.” The god did not sway with the punch. Dean shook his hand out.

“You’re handling this very well,” said Samuel with suspicion.

“Oh, I’m so mad I can’t feel my face anymore,” said Dean. “Who wants drinks?” He lifted the token. “Your lord’s paying.”

  
  
  


In the spring the ash tree greened and the town of Little Barrow strung it with cloth and knotted string. 

The Winchesters traveled south. Samuel’s mood brightened with every letter he sent Rowena. “Because I can finish my studies,” he tried to explain.

“Right,” said Dean. He sneered. “Your ‘studies.’”

Then Castiel, dripping cheery snowflakes all about him, said, “Don’t be an ass, Dean,” and kissed his cheek, and Samuel had to go off and write letters somewhere else.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dean/Cas Tropefest 5k Mid-Winter Challenge 2021. There was so much more I wanted to do with this but alas: word counts. Maybe I'll swing around again.


End file.
